STORY BY MAHMOOD FAZAL, PHOTOS BY CHRIS TURNER

When the covid pandemic hit, Claire and Paul Fogarty-Moore, founders of the Good Life Farm Co, were inundated with calls. Claire recalls, “egg sales went through the roof and the demand was crazy. We had people calling at 1am. ‘We want eggs! We want chickens! We want them now!’ I was like, ‘Do you think you could wait till eight in the morning?”

Claire and Paul met while making food for the St Vinnies soup van. “So we spent a lot of time, chatting and having cups of tea with underprivileged or disadvantaged people,” remembers Claire. “I was a coordinator and I used to go to the worst of the boarding houses, Paul was tall and pretty easy-going. He thought I liked him and I thought he was useful as a bodyguard. It all worked out.”

When their eldest son Hugh turned one, the couple decided to leave their permaculture plot in Altona and move to the country. Claire says, “We wanted Hugh to have a country upbringing. I think we wanted him to have the freedom that we had.”

Claire spent her youth on acreage in Bells Beach. “We had a state forest behind us. We'd ride our horses through to the beach and back again. We just used to disappear. My parents didn't know where we were most of the time. We had a huge amount of freedom that we couldn’t give our kids in the city.”

In 2014, while piecing together a new life on their farm in Kyneton, their lives took an unexpected turn.

“At the time, I was working as a stockbroker’s assistant. Paul was running a gardening and landscaping business. On his way home from work, he had a massive seizure and nearly drove into a building.” Claire's voice softens. “He developed epilepsy at the age of 35. And then he had uncontrollable seizures for the next year or two. And then the global financial crisis hit. The firm I worked for pulled its presence from Australia.”

Claire is known for her resilience. And the couple took inspiration from Hugh’s passion for raising chooks and making pocket money from a little egg enterprise. “We had a farm. So we started farming. And yeah, it's gone really well. I mean, within three years we started winning awards, and even made the finals of a United Nations Green Build competition. We were living in a one bed caravan with no running water or power and a 9 day old baby during the build for that one. It was exhausting but you’ve just got to keep going.”

Inspired by Hugh, Claire and Paul pursued their passion for ethical farming and developed The Good Life Farm Co. They purchased new mobile chook caravans and 600 pullets to join their existing flock of over 100 hens. Within six months they built another luxury mobile coop named 'The Millennium Chicken' to house an additional flock of 600.

During the covid lockdown, the problem of having six people living on their farm and only being allowed to purchase one packet of pasta at the supermarket sparked a lightbulb moment.

“I was like ‘there'd be a lot of people who are stressed like this. So we started taking out all our ugly eggs.” The couple employed local chefs who were out of work to turn their unwanted eggs into pasta. “But it ended up working so well that we've employed a chef for a few days a week here at the farm...Making pasta from wonky eggs is actually more valuable than our regular eggs.”

Both Claire and Paul firmly believe in sustainable farming, and this covid exercise has been a testament to the karmic nature of their practice. “55% of food waste starts on farms,” quipps Claire. “So it's a really big issue that a lot of farmers are now addressing; being able to do full circle farming or circular farming...taking products that weren't as valuable and making them into an essence.”

Pasta from The Good Life Farm Co is only available at the farm gate or at farmer's markets in Castlemaine, Bendigo, Lancefield and Malmsbury.

The Good Life Farm Co.

0403 843 314

Farm Gate: 104 Flynns Lane Kyneton

hello@thegoodlifefarmco.com.au

www.thegoodlifefarmco.com.au